Adolf Wuttke · 93 of 107
Section LXXVIII. The Inner Revelation and the Conscience. (Concl'd) · SECTION CXXXIX.
Inasmuch as all moral motive consists in love (§ 91), and inasmuch as virtue, as a moral property, is also an actuating power, hence virtue is essentially love to God, and is consequently per se not multiple but single. In so far, however, as the relation of this one-fold virtue may be different both as to the moral person and as to the object, it appears under the form of a plurality of virtues, which, however, as merely different phases and manifestation-forms of the one virtue, are never to be entirely separated from each other, and can never exist alone. These diverse manifestation-forms of virtue may be reduced to four cardinal virtues:—(1) Moral love preserves itself for the object in its proper relation to it, and thus manifests itself in the virtue of fidelity.—(2) Moral love preserves the object in its moral rights, and hence in its legitimate peculiarity,—as the virtue of justness.—(3) Moral love preserves the moral subject himself in his moral rights, and hence at the same time within his moral limits, in that it places upon the moral activity of the same a definite measure,—the virtue of temperateness.—(4) Moral love preserves at once both itself, the moral object and the moral subject in their moral rights, in that it actively opposes all hinderances that stand in the way of it and of its realization,—the virtue of courage.
We do not adopt the Platonic classification of the virtues which has found its way into a large portion of works on Christian ethics, for it is only by violence that it can be accommodated to the Christian consciousness. The cardinal virtues which we adopt, result logically and naturally from the notion of love as a disposition of the soul; and it is, by no means, accidental that they correspond to the four temperaments. The so-called temperament-virtues are simply the natural germs of the real virtues. The virtue of courage corresponds to the warm or choleric temperament; that of temperateness to the cold or phlegmatic; that of justness to the quick or sanguine,—for sanguine persons are very receptive for whatever is objective, accepting it just as it presents itself, yielding themselves to it, doing it no violence; sanguine persons are very companionable. The virtue of fidelity corresponds to the melancholic temperament, which, directed inwardly and dwelling within itself, and largely closed to outward influences, is not easily led astray.—The four virtues are so intimately connected with each other that each contains within itself in some measure all the others. Temperateness is justness in so far as it restrains man from that which does not become him; it is fidelity in so far as it regards love to God and to God’s will as having the highest claims, and does not allow the individual self to become too prominent; and it is courage in so far as it actively confines the unspiritual and the irrational within their proper limits. Justness is fidelity in so far as it preserves love for and verifies it upon the object; it is temperateness in so far as it respects every-where the measure and the limits of the moral person and of the object; and it is courage in so far as it carries out and vindicates the just. Fidelity is courage in so far as it asserts itself in the active overcoming of all hinderances; it is justness in so far as it manifests to the object only the measure of love which is really felt for it; and for the same reason it is temperateness. Temperateness and fidelity correspond to each other in so far as they both retain the moral person in a proper bearing in relation to the object; justness and courage correspond to each other in so far as they both resist all influences that are unfriendly to the moral. Temperateness and courage are purely human virtues in so far as both presuppose a creature-limit of the moral personality, and hence they can in no sense be predicated of God; fidelity and justness are also divine virtues [1 John i, 9] because they presuppose only a difference of the personal subject from the object, and a claim of the moral. The former two have in their manifestation a negating character,—presuppose an antagonism in which one phase must be made subordinate; the latter two bear a more affirmative character,—are an express recognition and carrying out of the moral rights of the object. Of a conflicting of the virtues. with each other there is no possibility.
Of the cardinal virtues here presented, three coincide with the Platonic virtues; but in the place of wisdom our classification gives fidelity. With the Greeks the making of wisdom the fundamental virtue was quite consequential; for all the other virtues were a fruit of moral knowledge, but not of love. From a Christian stand-point, where the moral freedom of the will is conceived more highly and is not placed in so unconditional a relation of dependence upon knowledge as with the Greeks, and where, consequently, virtue inheres essentially in the love-inspired will, wisdom is indeed conceived as a high morally-to-be-acquired good, as the presupposition and attendant of all virtue, and is also in fact closely associated with love, (§ 135), but still it cannot be regarded as a virtue proper. The first and most essential manifestation-form of virtue as love is persistent love, namely, fidelity, which consequently cannot be classified under any one of the other virtues as a subordinate manifestation, but it must be placed at the head, as the virtue dominating all the others.
(1) Fidelity (πίστις), thrown very much into the background in ethics, for the reason that, there, the absolutely firm basis of all morality, faith in the true God, was lacking, comes in the Christian consciousness into the foreground. Human virtue, as lasting love, is an image of the divine fidelity, which is presented in the Scriptures as one of the most prominent of the divine attributes, and is almost always associated with love, , and mercy [Gen. ix, 9 sqq.; Exod. xxxiv, 6; Deut. vii, 9; ix, 5; xxxii, 4; 1 Sam. xii, 22; Psa. lxxxvi, 15; 1 Cor. i, 9; x, 13; 1 Thess. v, 24; 2 Thess. iii, 3; 2 Tim. ii, 13]. God’s fidelity is loving grace; the fidelity of man is humble obedience, and is hence a manifestation of piety,—is, in ground and essence, fidelity toward the faithful God [Matt. xxv, 21; 1 Cor. iv, 2]; the holy walk of the Christian is summed up in the word: “Be thou faithful unto death” [Rev. ii, 10; comp. Psa. lxxxv, 11, 12; Matt. x, 22; Luke xvi, 10-12; 1 Cor. vii, 25].—True fidelity relates not to a mere idea, to a mere law, but to a spiritual reality, and chiefly to the personal spirit; love loves only a loving spirit. A merely conceived law cannot be loved; hence there can be no real fidelity to such, which is not in reality fidelity to the holy law-giver. Fidelity toward man is morally without anchor unless it is based on fidelity to God; for fidelity can be based only on a perfectly firm foundation. Fidelity to a creature in the absence of fidelity to God, would not be a virtue but sin. Fidelity is the truthfulness of love; a changing love is mere inclination, and is not moral; truth changes not, and hence also moral love changes not.—As relating to industrial activity in a temporal calling, fidelity appears as diligence, which is only then morally good, and hence a virtue, when it is a conscious persistence in our God-appointed moral task [Prov. x, 4; xii, 27; 1 Thess. iv, 11].
(2) Justness or is the constant willingness to the actual recognition of the rights of every moral personality, as well those of God as those of man; it is love in the fulfilling of the command: “Render unto Cesar the things which are Cesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” [Matt. xxii, 21],—the imitating of the righteousness of God which gives to each that which is his due. In the Scriptures justness or righteousness is one of the most important of the moral notions, and it appears even in its widest sense as the respecting of the suum cuique; it is a manifestation of love, and a never fully to be absolved debt [Rom. xiii, 8]; and in so far as it is a manifestation of reciprocal love it is thankfulness (§ 125). It is for the reason that justness lovingly fulfills the claims of God that it can lay claim to the essence of virtue in general; it is virtue in so far as virtue is a disposition of soul recognizing the claims of God upon us. Christ sums up all our moral relations to our fellows under the one head, justness, and makes of this, in its fuller sense. the fundamental idea of morality: “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them, for this is the law and the prophets” [Matt. vii, 12]; this is not merely ordinary civil justice, but the higher,—that which is an expression of love. But all love seeks to maintain the harmony of existence, and hence the divine order of the world, that is, the rights of whatever truly is; and all human justness is a copy of the divine [Deut. x, 17, 18.]
Justness adapts itself to the differences of existence and of rights; God has different rights from those of man, and among men there exist, even in an unfallen state, different rights, according to their differing conditions and relations; parents have different rights from those of the children, governors from those of the governed; justness gives not to each the same, but to each that which is his due [Rom. xiii, 7-9], and thus realizes the harmony of existence. Even toward nature there is a justness, inasmuch as nature, in virtue of its being good, has a claim upon the moral spirit (§ 127). Real justness therefore presupposes wisdom; its practice becomes difficult, however, only where the harmony of existence is already disturbed by sin. The Scriptures describe justness manifoldly in its single manifestations [e. g. Lev. xix; Job xxxi; Psa. xv; ci; Ezek. xviii, 6-9; Isa. i, 17; Jer. xxii, 3; Zech. vii, 9, 10; viii, 16, 17; Luke vi, 38]; the Decalogue itself is but a description thereof. That Christian justness or righteousness is not a merely human virtue but essentially a gift of grace, need here only to be mentioned in passing. As virtue simply and purely, it appears only in the person of Christ [1 John ii, 1, 29; Acts iii, 14; 1 Pet. iii, 18].
(3) Temperateness, the self-discipline of the heart, the σωφροσύνη of the Greeks, is presented in the New Testament in the narrower sense of ἐγκράτεία, while σωφροσύνη, has, here also, only the more specific sense of modesty and irreproachableness of behavior [1 Tim. ii, 9; perhaps only in verse 15 in a somewhat wider sense], but the adjective σώφρων is used in a more general sense [1 Tim. iii, 2; Tit. i, 8; ii, 5]. Temperateness in the wider and full sense is the self-restraining of the subject within his normal moral limits, a subordinating of all self-seeking desires to unconditional obedience to the moral law, and hence, on the one hand, as relating to sensuousness, a controlling of the sensuous desires by the moral reason, and, on the other, as relating to the spiritual, a controlling of self-love by love to God and to our neighbor,—a maintaining of the rights of the rational spirit in its true essence. That temperateness is at once also justness is self-evident; it is but another phase of the same virtue. Even as relating to the sensuous desires it is also justness, in so far as these are restrained within their moral limits out of regard to the higher rights of the spirit. Modesty, patience, and obediateness are special phases of this virtue; so also are shame, pudicity and chastity, as a keeping of sexual sensuousness within bounds, a subordinating of it to its higher moral conditions; shame and pudicity are rather the inner elements, the state of the heart, and chastity rather the outward manifestation; they are an expression of the fact that this sensuous instinct has absolutely no right per se, but only in the service of wedlock-love.—Temperateness presupposes indeed a difference and a possible antagonism between selfish desires (especially the sensuous ones) and the morally-rational consciousness, though not an actually-existing antagonism and opposition. In its manifestation it is more a negating virtue than justness, and yet its essence is very affirmative.—This virtue becomes most difficult where the individual energy stands forth most strongly over against general, rational right, and hence in the period of youthful vigor when the consciousness of personal strength and of self-will delights to cope with objective barriers, and seeks to cast them off as trameling fetters,—when the strongly self-conscious individuality delights to enjoy this consciousness, whether in the enjoyment of sensuous pleasure, or in that of unbounded freedom, or in that of will-assertion. Fidelity, justness, and courage are, for vigorous youth, much more easily attained to and preserved than the virtue of temperateness; but as all the virtues are only different phases of virtue in general, and as they are all connected with each other in a vital unity, hence the violation of one of them is necessarily also a violation of the others; intemperateness is, in every respect, per se also an , an unjustness and a cowardliness, and it leads directly to a further development of these vices.
(4) Courage, the moral readiness to combat against whatever opposes the moral end,—expressed by the Greeks by the more limited ἀνδρεία, and in the Scriptures by the higher and more inward notion of παῤῥησία [Eph. iii, 12; 1 Tim. iii, 10, etc.],—is the being joyous and confident in the carrying out of the moral idea on the basis of hopeful faith [Matt. v, 12; Acts ii, 29; iv, 13, 29, 31; ix, 27, 28; xiii, 46; xiv, 3; xviii, 26; xix, 8; xxvi, 26; xxviii, 31; Rom. viii, 31 sqq.; 2 Cor. iii, 12; v, 6, 8; xii, 10; Eph. iii, 12; vi, 19, 20; Phil. i, 20; 1 Thess. ii, 2; Heb. xii, 3; Psa. cxviii, 5 sqq.]. The moral life of the Christian is a constant struggle [Luke xiii, 24; 1 Tim. vi, 12] as well against the outward hinderances of the moral life as also against the inner opposing desires and against and fear. Though both these forms of hinderance do not hold good in a strict sense for the unfallen state, still we must doubtless admit that there were relatively corresponding relations of a normal kind. During the development of man toward his ultimate perfection there constantly exists an, as yet, extra moral reality, namely, nature within and without him, which is to be brought within the dominion of moral reason, and which is, as extra-moral, also per se a barrier that is to be overcome by moral effort; however, it is not an active antagonism, and the effort does not involve suffering. Self-love, in itself perfectly legitimate, needs also to be brought into perfect subordination to the love of God, and the mastering of it requires conflict and courage. This “parrhaesia” is not mere feeling, not mere in4vard peace, but it is essentially a combat-courting courage, a persistence in the moral struggle in virtue of joyous trust in God. Absolutely sure of victory, it fears nothing and undauntedly carries out what it undertakes.
